John PIlger speaks truth to power, right on, and it's refreshing to hear his voice raised in constant protest against the chronic mass killings of innocent people throughout the world by democratic states, including Australia, that goes largely unnoticed by the mass media, or even lionised, for example by citing "our" troops as "serving the country" at major sporting events – when they're actually destroying people's lives and homes.

However there is a fault line running through Pilger's theory. He thinks the deployment of state power by democratic states against defenceless foreign populations is illegitimate, but the deployment of the same power by the same people against their own subject domestic populations is legitimate and desirable as "democracy".

He thinks the problem is chronic war *on* democracy, rather than war *by* democracy, as if democracy were the ultimate desideratum. He seems to think the behaviour of the USA and Britain is some kind of distortion of democracy, rather than the expression of it.

But obviously the USA and Britain are among - if not *the* - world's leading democracies. Yet as Pilger shows, their record of aggressive war is truly abysmal. It's not uncommon for them to have several wars or occupations running simultaneously.

So it is cognitive dissonance to think that the problem is not enough democracy! Rather we need to understand that the internal logic and dynamic of democracy promotes aggressive war abroad and mutual plunder at home, even more than the monarchies it replaced.

This is because the directors of democratic government, having no ownership interest in it but only a temporary use-right, have an incentive to get as much out of it as quickly as possible - promoting a shorter over a longer time horizon. For the same reasons, they have no incentive to conserve the capital value of the patrimony – including relations with other nations - which promotes destructive short-term immoral behaviour at the expense of productive behaviour with a view to the longer term.

Hans Hermann-Hoppe develops this insight in his “Democracy: the God That Failed”.

An awesome Pilgerist broad-spectrum rant that would have been more effective if it wasn't disarmed by its scattergun approach.

It hits everything Western - what it leaves out: China, the Islamo-Fascist crescent and USSR/Russia is all the more telling...

Planta

Posted by plantagenet, Monday, 23 January 2012 10:58:33 AM

A few years ago I would have had grave doubts about the veracity of Pilger's view. However, today (and tragically) it rings very true. BTW Gerald Celente already regards the USA as a fascist state under Mussolini's definition of fascism as "the merger of state and corporate power". The NDAA act is just astonishing. I fear greatly for the citizens of the USA and I wonder what our own subservient goverment has in store for us. It would be interesting to hear what Philip Adams thinks of the passing into law of NDAA - he so loves the USA but NDAA truly marks the end of America's "leadership" in democracy. With NDAA the USA's destiny is made manifest.

Posted by michael_in_adelaide, Monday, 23 January 2012 12:00:30 PM

What is perhaps scariest about the NDAA and other increments in Obama's criminal security program (double/triple entendre intended) is the thought of who might inherit its powers.

Despite the examples of many seeds under the snow, you have to wonder if there is any way back... There aren't enough Lisettes, and particularly not where the snow is deepest.

Posted by cardigan, Monday, 23 January 2012 1:23:44 PM

"Democracy" is indeed the problem. According to George Orwell it's the most difficult word in the English language to define, but essentially it means government by the people. Modern representative democracies are no such thing; they are de facto oligarchies wherein the people are manipulated, rather than coerced, into supporting a hegemonic agenda. Our so-called democracies are nothing but public relations propaganda machines, wherein the wonted course is choreographed via political grandstanding and mock-free-elections. The agenda can take the form of deliberate policy or, more often, it can be promoted as "inevitable"--just so, principles are inevitably, unavoidably, trampled upon. The population meanwhile takes heart from the agonising and the difficulty of the decision taken, to bomb yet another country or perpetrate yet another abomination against those much vaunted but traumatised ideals we prate about on national days. It's all part of the process; willingness, even eagerness, to do the dirty deed is never in doubt, it's just that a semblance of prevarication appeases the conscience of the do-gooders and furnishes insurance against political trials--having cultivated public support, Bush, Blair and Howard may rest assured they're protected against prosecution.What Peter Hume seems to be promoting is open, economic oligarchy, or feaudalism, which would at least be refreshing in that we could do away with the hypocrisies associated with democratic capitalism, and admit that we're fundamentally motivated by self-interest rather than ideals.Modern democracy is a sham; a politico-economic strategy for manipulating markets and consumers. So I say yes, let's maintain the retreat from democracy towards free markets, political anarchy and corporate feudalism.Question: apropos Pilmer's article, at what point does the US and its allies lose all diplomatic and moral legitimacy?Answer: at the point where "democracies" collapse, unable any longer to support the outrages foisted by democratic governments as inevitable.

Posted by Mitchell, Monday, 23 January 2012 6:55:39 PM

"What Peter Hume seems to be promoting is open, economic oligarchy, or feaudalism..."

I agree with all else you've said, but you got that bit back the front. Economic oligarchy and feudalism are what the democrats and statists are promoting - just look around.

The difference between what they're promoting and what I am, is that the advantages of corporations under the democratic system are legally entrenched.

What I'm promoting is that they not be. That way the only advantage they will enjoy is if people prefer their services, and if they do, who are you to say it should be otherwise?

Every law that imposes burdens on businesses - whether it be tax, superannuation, OHS, zoning, consumer protection, IR, - works to advantage big business over small by excluding competition. Often big business themselves lobby for these laws because they'll gain more than they lose.

Then the same people who are in favour of these laws complain at the predominance of big corporations and how intermeshed they are with government. It never occurs to them that their own ideology is the main cause of this phenomenon.

Contrary to popular misconception, the feudal period was not a time of economic freedom. On the contrary, the prevailing political ideology - divine right of kings - and the fact that government revenue mostly came from selling or leasing monopolies, meant that each industry was legally stitched up in favour of the main producers and the political class, paid for by the impoverishment of everyone else.

Since the concept of economic freedom is anathema to the left wing, they always stand for more goverment control of business, then they complain that the economic landscape is dominated by big state-favoured corporations, surprise surprise. Perhaps if they read more economics, and less Marxist slogans, they might make the connection between what they're been doing, and the western world's descent into fascism based on a creed of unlimited government.

How can you think government is trustworthy of even more control of business? That leaves freedom as the only option we haven't tried yet.